"If Speaker Newt Gingrich
gets his way, the laws protecting air, water and wildlife may
be endangered." So blared a caption in a recent issue of
Time magazine.

An ominous warning, to be sure.
But is it true?

Time makes two flawed assumptions:
First, that current environmental laws are doing a good job of
protecting air, water, and wildlife and second, that Speaker
Gingrich wants to repeal these laws.

The truth is, Time's claim
-- borrowed from its friends in the environmental movement --
says more about the political acumen of the environmental movement
than it does about Speaker Gingrich's real environmental positions.

With Newt Gingrich's approval
ratings well below 30 percent, environmentalists have been trying
to link the Speaker to environmental reform efforts in a cynical
attempt to stifle needed reforms. Just as the Democratic National
Committee finds it necessary to link Newt Gingrich to Bob Dole
to defeat Bob Dole, environmentalists find it necessary to link
Newt Gingrich to environmental reforms to defeat these reforms
and advance their own agenda.

The irony is that Newt Gingrich
frequently supports the environmentalists' agenda. Despite flowery
rhetoric about bringing common-sense to environmental legislation
and protecting private property rights, Newt Gingrich has consistently
perpetuated the status quo. He has maintained a heavy reliance
on the command and control mechanisms which have resulted in
the gradual deterioration of both the environment and individual
rights. A close look at his record tells the story.

Not only has the Speaker failed
to propose common-sense environmental legislation, he has actually
thwarted such efforts by others: He delayed changes to a dolphin
protection law that were sought by tuna fisherman and had been
given the green light by Greenpeace; he attempted to block widely
popular efforts to repeal the Delaney Clause, an archaic regulation
that banned certain food additives premised on the scientific
knowledge of the 1950s and 1960s; he blocked a bill from even
coming to the floor which would have curbed some of the worst
abuses of the Endangered Species Act and made it work better
for both people and wildlife; and he opposed a proposal to lift
the scientifically unfounded ban of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs),
a refrigerant used in automobile air conditioners.

Then there's the Speaker's
record on private property rights. He backed the National Biological
Survey, a program set up ostensibly to survey the nation's biological
resources, but which has been used to regulate and target private
property for government acquisition. He also co-sponsored the
American Heritage Trust Act, the single greatest threat to private
property during the 101st Congress, which would have made $1
billion in government funds available per year for converting
private land into federal land.

Worse yet, during the closing
weeks of Bob Dole's tenure as Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker
urged Dole put off consideration of the Omnibus Property Rights
bill. This bill would have forced the government to compensate
property owners for losses in property value resulting from government
regulation -- something more than two-thirds of the American
people support, according to recent polls. Gingrich's rationale?
The vote couldn't be won on the Senate floor. By this logic,
the Senate never would have voted on the balanced budget amendment
-- a measure many Senators now wish they had voted for as they
seek reelection.

It turns out that Speaker Gingrich
has always been an environmentalist. During the 1980s, Gingrich
received high marks -- particularly for a Republican -- from
the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) for his environmental
positions. For the 1987-1988 legislative session, the LCV gave
him a rating of 50%. Perhaps this isn't surprising though, given
that the Speaker was once a card-carrying member of the Sierra
Club.

And where does Gingrich stand
today? He's as green as ever. He recently assembled an environmental
task force to serve as the gate keeper for all environmental
legislation. Despite the fact that environmental establishment
Republicans make up only a small minority of the Republican caucus,
the Speaker gave them nearly half of the seats on the task force's
steering committee -- ensuring that they would have virtual veto
power over all environmental legislation. Furthermore, the Speaker
appointed Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) to co-chair
the task force -- one of the most rabid environmentalists, Democrat
or Republican. Boehlert received a 92% rating from the League
of Conservation Voters, giving him a higher environmental score
than 53% of the Democrats in Congress.

On May 15, the Speaker's task
force released a vision and strategy statement. In the introduction
they claim that they will, "offer common sense, flexible
and effective approaches that build on consensus, private property
ownership, free enterprise, local control, sound scientific evidence
and the latest technology."

Such a pledge -- if kept --
would be welcomed by millions of Americans. But given the Speaker's
own record and the composition of his task force, the prognosis
is not good.

The bottom line is that Speaker
Gingrich has more in common with the environmental movement than
either he or the movement would like to admit.

Ryan Sager is a research
associate with The National Center for Public Policy Research